Dali portrait on offer in surrealist auction

Joan Miro’s work “Le Fermier et son epouse” 1936 (“The Farmer and his Wife”), will be sold at a Sotheby’s auction house Feb. 5 in London. The work is estimated to sell for 5.5 to 7.5 million pounds ($8.7-$11.8 million).

Alastair Grant/Associated Press

Joan Miro’s work “Le Fermier et son epouse” 1936 (“The Farmer and his Wife”), will be sold at a Sotheby’s auction house Feb. 5 in London. The work is estimated to sell for 5.5 to 7.5 million pounds ($8.7-$11.8 million).

LONDON – Salvador Dali’s portrait of a New York style icon and Joan Miro’s homage to his Catalan roots are going on sale at a London auction of surrealist masterpieces.

Dali’s 1943 “Portrait of Mrs. Harrison Williams” will go under the hammer Tuesday with an estimated price of between 1.5 million and 2 million pounds ($2.4 million and $3.2 million).

Dali painted the ultra-rich and super-stylish socialite who later became Countess Mona Bismarck barefoot and dressed in black rags.

Proceeds will go to the Mona Bismarck American Center in Paris, which promotes Franco-American cultural relations.

Also for sale is Miro’s 1936 “Le Fermier et son epouse,” a vibrant portrait of human figures and barnyard animals, valued between 5.5 million pounds and 7.5 million pounds ($8.7 million to $11.9 million).

Reporters also were given a preview Thursday of Sotheby’s February auctions of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art, including works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Egon Schiele, Francis Bacon and Jean-Michel Basquiat.